Absorption

Absorption Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon (bio) The hyena’s thick neck, the terror— not the jaws, not even the crushing grin: a perversion: the teeth of such clowning. I don’t want to see it take a strip of meat from that man’s mouth with its mouth as gently as a lover might but you are intrigued by the prospect of that kiss. You cover my mouth when I try to tell you how the priest at Bet Giyorgis blessed me: he placed a pinch of red dirt on my tongue and I swallowed it against everything I know. I could not help but take it in. I thought of you. Yes you have a dirty mouth you tell me and you tell me how beautiful you find some Youtube vision: those fierce-necked creatures brought to sweetness you wanted me to see. [End Page 866] Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon is the author of Open Interval, a National Book Award finalist, and Black Swan, winner of the 2001 Cave Canem Poetry Prize. She teaches in the English Department at Cornell University. Copyright © 2011 The Johns Hopkins University Press

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